The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Ethernet is increasingly used as a common infrastructure for all types of traffic within data center networks. Accordingly, other communication protocols that are useful in data center networks are increasingly required to coexist with an Ethernet infrastructure. For example, the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol is used in some Ethernet-based data center networks to allow Fibre Channel (FC) devices (e.g., in storage area networks) to relay traffic over Ethernet. As another example, the Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) protocol is used in some Ethernet-based data center networks to provide shortest-path bridging between source and destination nodes on the Ethernet. As an increasing number of protocols are merged into a common architecture, however, significant inefficiencies can arise.